A house is burning and on the brink of collapse.
There is only time to rescue, alternatively, either a couple of children
desperately begging for help or, on the opposite side of the building, a
freezer containing hundreds of embryos in phials. A choice is necessary: to
whom the priority? If you are convinced that embryos are human beings, the
answer is inevitable: you will save the frozen embryos and accept to let the
two children burn alive, as saving hundreds of “persons” is better than saving
just two. Would you really be prepared to do that?

Whether arguing on abortion, in vitro fertilisation or freedom of research on stem cells, political and cultural
positions of secularists and progressives always end up clashing with the same
argument: abortion, in vitro fertilisation and research on stem cells would be incompatible
with the character of “human person” inherent to the embryo since the very
first moment.

We usually prefer not to confront this argument
directly, consider this less convenient, and avoid the fundamental issue, mostly
by using pragmatic arguments, as the “lesser evil” one, or, in the case of
abortion, balancing the interest to the preservation of the embryo with that of
the woman’s health. The point is that, in this way, on the matters of principle
we let resound uncontested the only voice of religious fundamentalists that, step
by step, is being accepted more and more widely as the only ethically well
grounded one, and risks to be accepted as the obvious moral common sense.

In this way, moreover, we hamper our possibility
of highlighting a striking inconsistency in our opponents’ theories. Therefore,
this inconsistency is completely ignored even in the public debate and
substantially hidden by almost all the media. On the ground of principles, only
the voice of the religious fundamentalists appears to give a simple answer to a
not so simple question.

The ignored and concealed inconsistency in our
opponents’ argument is to be found in the postulate itself on which the “pro-life”
campaign is based, i.e. the assumption that the embryo is already a human
person. If taken seriously and brought to its inevitable consequences – inevitable
not extreme – this postulate leads to conclusions that are so aberrant that only
the most fanatic supporter of those theories would accept to defend them.

The most evident inconsistency is to be found in
stating, on the one hand, that abortion is equal to murder, or even to an
endless massacre, without asking, on the other hand, for the simple repeal or deep
modifications of the existing laws, simply because it is known that in all our
countries this request would be rejected by public opinion and defeated – as already
happened in the past many times – in the countries where popular referenda can
be held. For this reason those who apodictically affirm that the embryo is a “person”,
generally limit their demand to the meticulous enforcement of rules that make
abortion difficult, onerous, sometimes impossible to obtain due to a high
number of conscientious objectors in the medical professions.

This is obviously a very weak argument: how is
it possible, if you affirm that suppressing an embryo is equal to murder, not
to ask for the absolute interdiction of abortion? Those who brag to stand out
from the crowd in our secularised societies, who finally proclaim high and loud
the evident truth that the others would withhold for fear or conformism, should
then retreat in the face of that obvious, immediate, direct consequence of
their own discovery?

Probably they understand that they could not
stop there.

Many of the criminal provisions that until some
decades ago punished abortion did not start from the premise that abortion was a
murder. For instance, until 1975, the Italian penal code, adopted under
fascism, did not punish abortion as a crime against the person, such as murder,
but just as a crime “against the integrity and the health of the Italian stock [stirpe]”: a logic akin to the one
that motivated the fierce repression of abortion in Ceauşescu’s Romania, and
that in a number of countries forbade to advertise birth control, since it was
believed that the might of the nation demanded high birth-rates. That is why
art. 546 of the Italian penal code originally stated that the woman who decided
to have an abortion and whoever practiced abortion with her consent would be
punished with a statutory penalty from two to five years in prison, namely a
penalty not comparable to the life sentence (at the time of the issue of the
code, even the death penalty) provided for premeditated murder.

Actually the extremist thesis, that oddly nobody
even discusses, since nobody seems capable to take it really seriously, but
that is still supported in principle by the Catholic hierarchy up to its top,
is even more radical: it was John Paul II who dared compare the legalization of
abortion introduced in the last decades in almost every Western country to no
less than the extermination of the Jews by Nazism. This is more than premeditated
murder: here we are talking of gross violations of human rights, those
violations so serious and heinous, such as genocide, apartheid, torture, mass
execution, inhuman and degrading treatments, that are forbidden not only by domestic
law, but also by customary international law. With the consequence that,
wherever they are committed, whatever state would be authorized to proceed against
whomever responsible; and excluding any statute of limitation, because the
importance of these crimes results in their imprescriptibility.

Let us admit – even if it was not so – that the
old Pope just wanted to use a rhetoric hyperbole (a hyperbole, however,
recalled with the usual fatuity by bigoted supporters and obedient
politicians): still, if the embryo is to be considered a human person, the
legal protection against its suppression could not be less firm than the one
granted to every other human being, and for a premeditated murder the expected statutory
penalty, for instance in Italy, is a life sentence.

No way of getting by with the argument that it
is not possible to punish with a sanction adequate to its claimed objective
gravity a behaviour whose criminal character is underestimated because of the
eclipse of traditional values: this argument was rejected, once and for all, by
the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials and by Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, and it is rejected
even by what Catholics usually call the “relativistic” jurisprudence of our
time.

There is a further necessary consequence in our
opponents’ argument: if accepted, and if a pregnant woman unsuccessfully attempted
to have an abortion, the state could not abstain from adopting all the preventive
measures necessary to protect a human life that was unequivocally threatened in
its own existence. Given the premise, how would it be possible not to hold that
woman under constant surveillance, and force her to give birth? Could a human
being perhaps be left at the mercy of someone who seriously and certainly
wanted to kill him/her?

Moreover, even if a pregnancy was caused by
rape, but the embryo is considered a human person, “one of us”, how would it be possible to authorize abortion even in
this case? Could the circumstances of conception have any influence on the
right to life of a “person”? Of course not: once accepted the embryo – and even
more so a foetus – as a person, suppressing a foetus which is the result of a
rape, would be as illicit as killing a born baby conceived by a rape: at most
the woman’s physical alteration could be considered and a compassionate extenuating
circumstance expected.

Perhaps abortion could only be allowed in the
case of a serious and proved risk of death for the expectant mother, who in
that case – we can admit – could claim necessity. But sure the same conclusion
might not be claimed in the case of a risk, even a very serious risk, for the
woman’s mere physical health, and least of all for her merely mental health:
how to justify the prevalence of the protection of the mother-to-be’s health on
that of the very life of another “person”? That would completely lack the
prerequisite of the necessary proportionality between the suppression of
another life and the entity of the risk run by the woman (the principle of
proportionality to be applied to anyone who acts in necessity is prescribed by
all the European criminal laws, and in Italy by art. 54 of the penal code).

Not even could an abortion be considered licit in case of
very serious foetal malformation, even if the life of the born baby is for sure
very short and the pain excruciating: is it licit to kill a disabled? So, green
light to irresponsible procreation: a ferocious behaviour from the point of
view of those who, even without claiming that that is a self-evident ethical
truth, think that giving birth to a baby knowing that it will carry tremendous
disabilities and being able to prevent that, is barely less immoral than
artificially causing the same infirmity to a healthy child.

And this is not enough. Once established the
absurd equivalence between the embryo and a human person, how would it be
possible to respect a law authorizing the “mass murder” of embryos? It would even
be legally illicit to obey to a similar law, and morally compulsory to take actively
position against it. If the embryo is a human person, abortion is murder, the
law authorizing it is a law legalizing a slaughter and those who implement it are
murderers, rather exterminators similar to Eichmann.

A last aberrant consequence, but absolutely not a
distorted or extreme one, is logically inevitable for those who maintain the aberrant
starting postulate. Non only one shouldn’t play political games and stop just a
step before demanding that abortion be illegal and clandestine again: if
Vatican officials and obedient politicians took seriously what they say, they
could not stop there, they should seriously ask themselves whether to recommend
to their faithful to cross the same threshold that was crossed many a time by
some activists of the extreme religious right in the United States: those who,
in their consequential insanity, thought it wastheir duty to stop the “massacre”, by any possible means. Even a radical
religious nonviolent theorist as Gandhi believed that there are two circumstances
in which killing is not only licit, but even morally due: one was, for him, in some
qualified circumstances, euthanasia; the other, that I think may be shared by
everyone, is the defence of a third party when there are no other means to prevent
his/her murder. In face of a murder that is on the point of being committed, and
if that is the only way to stop the assassin’s hand, shooting at the murderer
before he/she kills an innocent is licit and morally due as well. And what else
the citizen of a state where a law authorizing mass murder is in force could do
in order to “stop the massacre”? Sure he/she could not call the police, to
avoid a “massacre” that nevertheless is legal. He/she ought to do what an
honest, enlightened and heroic German citizen should have done facing
Auschwitz: halting the executioner’s hand, if necessary, with violence.

An extremist conclusion? Too consequential? I
wait for one of those frivolous advocates who affirm that every embryo is “one
of us”, that abortion is a murder, and that legislation consenting abortion
allows a genocide, to explain how they could escape these aberrant conclusions.

Even if a lot of democratic politicians would be
afraid to come to that conclusion, the answer to be given is that the conclusions
are aberrant because the postulate is aberrant.

The latter is not presented as a dogmatic truth
peculiar to the Christian or Catholic faith, but as a natural fact, verified by
science. Et pour cause: only
affirming that it is a natural evidence, nowadays finally clear thanks to
scientific research, the Catholic hierarchy can justify the fact that abortion
was not considered a murder by its own predecessors, theologians, popes,
bishops and councils, until the XVII century (except for some rare discordant
hints) and that this thesis did not become official doctrine before Pius IX’s,
to be finally introduced in the code of canon law only in 1917.

Unfortunately for the hierarchy and for its
frantic and servile political and media claque, this “scientific” evidence
cannot be confirmed by scientists that, as scientists, can only say what a
zygote, a morula, a blastocyst, an embryo, a foetus, an individual are, but of
course cannot define what a “human person” is, as this is no scientific
concept; neither is this pretence considered as an undisputable truth by the
generality of believers and nonbelievers, not even of Catholics; and it does
not correspond even to the orientations by now prevalent in Europe among many Protestants,
for instance, the Italian Waldensians.

The extremist and unfounded nature of the
starting postulate is even unveiled by the sacramental and liturgical practice
of the Catholic Church itself, that does not baptise foetuses, does not
traditionally officiate religious funerals even of foetuses so developed to be
confused by non-scientists as those of chimpanzees (in Italy uproar was caused
some years ago by the isolated but consequential initiative of the bishop of L’Aquila,
and if just now the custom starts to spread out, that is because it is
essentially a political practice) and follows the common sensitivity when it
does not consider a mournful event the missed natural implantation of a blastocyst
in the maternal uterus and the consequent “death” of the “person” at issue: a
fate that, concerning 80% of conceptions, should push the entire humanity, and
especially all young heterosexual couples, to fall into a recurrent, obsessive
and nearly perpetual mourning.

Instead we should rejoice: with a structural
multiplication of the birth rate by five, human life on Earth would be extinct
long ago; neither would it enjoy good health with the billion inhabitants more whose
lack many fundamentalists deprecate because of the abortions performed in the
last decades.

This last element should indeed impose a more
realistic evaluation of the problem: for mother nature itself the embryo, until
it is just an embryo, is just an attempt, that still has a negligible “value”.
But an embryo that has not developed a hint of a nervous system yet, deserves our
compassion less than a sentient animal, as the latter, at least from the
physical point of view, is somehow capable of feeling pain in a way probably
similar to ours. Claiming that even a set of cells of the size of less than a
millimetre has the same value of a human being is a pure and simple absurdity,
as demonstrated by the dilemma introduced at the beginning: those who really
share the official Catholic opinions should also be prepared to prioritise the
frozen phials and let the two children burn alive, since rescuing hundreds of “persons”
is better than rescuing just two. That is a point of view similar to that of those
extreme animal rights advocates, and extreme ethical vegans, who think that frying
an egg is equal to wringing a hen’s neck. At a stage of development lower than
that of a sentient animal, the embryo should not have, and it has not been given
in the past (when the catholic Church
itself used to consider it “inanimate”), a value per se higher than that of a
chicken. But less superficial would be the comparison to a coelenterate.

A value, an enormous one, can obviously be subjectively
ascribed to the embryo by the pregnant woman, in the hope that it will develop
and be born: but only if and as long as she does nourish that hope, within an
affective relationship which is necessarily unilateral. And indeed an abortion
committed against the will of the woman is rightly considered by everyone a very
serious crime.

And if the advancements of the last years make it
possible for less and less mature foetuses to survive (often in dreadful
conditions), rather than reducing the time in which a woman can ask for the
interruption of her pregnancy, or imposing her a “pause for reflection”, we
should take care of facilitating a decision as quick as possible, even with all
the more prompt tests that may be necessary and opportune, in order to avoid
any physical suffering of embryos who have already developed some sensitivity, taking
into account the more and more widespread concern for animal suffering.

But of course, the main way to avoid abortions
should be the most widespread availability of information and means apt to
prevent undesired pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, with a wider
presence of condom machines, also in schools, and the free purchase and
availability of the morning-after pill without prescription, as already happens
in many countries. But that is exactly what religious fundamentalists and their
political friends loathe, because their great concern for foetuses precisely originates
from the will to artificially restore a waned political and cultural supremacy
and to reinforce the privileges and the economical burdens imposed to the whole
secularized community (as in the past Islamic sovereigns used to do against the
dominated Christian populations); and to bring back all the manias, obsessions,
prejudices, discriminations of a traditionalist sexual morality that has now
been, since decades, largely in the minority: and not even through education or
conviction, but just trying to materially damage the existence of those who do
not line up with them. Eventually, it is not a matter of protection of the embryo
as a “human person”, but just an attempt to compel all citizens to adopt behavioural
rules consistent with their own
ideology, their own world view – and more often, eventually, with their own
religion – and to make life miserable and difficult for those who do not want
to adapt because they have different convictions, principles and values:
especially concerning their own sexual life.

What has been said on abortion comes back
precisely in the field of assisted human fertilisation. Not even the Italian
law on artificial insemination – which was in its original version one of the
most restrictive in the world, passed by a clerical and populist parliamentary
majority lead by Berlusconi, and later declared in several parts invalid by the
Italian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights – got so
far as to forbid any destruction of embryos within the necessary procedures:
the law, in its original formulation, just limited to three the number of
embryos that could be destroyed in the attempts of fertilisation and thus inflicted
to the woman painful and useless procedures and harassment (this way pushing all
those who could afford it to seek fertilisation abroad). But how is it possible
that those who affirm that the embryos are persons then admit, even within rigid
limits, their “murder”?

Same problem each time politicians decide to
forbid or restrict medical research on embryonic stem cells, that, according to
most researchers, constitutes the most promising way to treat many serious invalidating or deadly
diseases in the future. Even supernumerary embryos, produced within the
procedures necessary for artificial fertilisation, and even if they cannot be
used in other fertilisations, cannot, according to the Italian law and those of
other countries, be used for medical research. Yet, as said, their inevitable
supernumerary production has been foreseen, even though in the ridiculous
number of three – a limitation ruled out by the Constitutional Court – by the
ultra-restrictive law itself, introduced by Berlusconi’s majority. In this case,
too, if the premise is that every embryo
is a “human person”, it should be evident how absurd the provided sanction is: destroying
three “persons” was considered licit, but jail up to three years and fine from
50,000 to 150,000 euros was provided for professionals that would destroy a
forth one! Moreover: three years and a fine, for a premeditated murder? What
sense does it make to provide a compromise between a principle whose inevitable
consequence would be the provision of the maximum punishment provided for by criminal law and the obvious
practical impossibility to enforce the aberrant consequences of that principle?
In this case, too: how is it possible not to come to the conclusion that the
consequences are aberrant because the premise itself is simply aberrant?

It is because of these ideological prejudices,
that also in this case are inevitably applied with utter inconsistency, that most
European and Western countries arbitrarily limit the freedom of scientific
research and also impede investments, occupation and development in an economic
and scientific sector among the most advanced in the world.

But it is first of all the human cost of the
transposition into law of religious prohibitions in this field to be fierce and
incalculable: the law does not just capriciously create obstacles to artificial
insemination for sterile couples. Forbidding the research on embryonic stem
cells makes it impossible for science to follow one of the ways considered by
many scientists the most promising for the future of medicine and the research
of treatment for the most deadly, dreadful and invalidating diseases of our
times. Charlatan politicians with no scientific education often claim that
adult stem cells can be used for scientific research as well, and that they are
as good as the embryonic ones: but it is not a task for politics and
politicians, but for the scientific community alone, to decide which ways are
more or less promising for research.

Our opponents often object that disposing of
embryos for any purpose different from reproduction would be prejudicial to
human dignity. We should reply that the dignity to be recognized to the embryo
– at very least as long as it is incapable of autonomous sensitivity – is the
same that is to be recognized to any part of the human body detached from the
person to which it belonged. It would be absurd to preserve at whatever cost a
detached part of a human body, and it would be irresponsible to prohibit any
use of it for medical treatments or medical research (as it is currently done
with donated organs, and as medicine always did with corpses since the
beginning of the modern age, defying previous prohibitions – and as it must be
done, when strictly indispensable also today, even with sentient and superior
animals). On the other hand, it is not and should not be allowed to dispose of
an amputated human limb by throwing it into a trash container, and not just for
sanitary reasons or in order not to hurt public sensitivity, but precisely out
of respect for human dignity, and regardless of the fact that the amputated
limb obviously was not a person.

So far our democratic, and even secular,
politicians, have often felt obliged to restrain from using the good arguments they could use, good
like all the arguments with which the Enlightened liberal culture consolidated
modernity in Europe.

Now they mostly stay aphasic in front of those
who intimidate them reminding that all of us have been embryos once. It should
not be so difficult to answer that, for that matter, before being embryos we also
were dust.And dust will we return. But
that is no good reason to revere dust.

The time has come to face the question openly
and without shyness: those who think of hushing us up with the argument that the
embryo is to be considered a human person, have to be put in front of the
aberrantethical consequences of a consequential
enforcement of this principle into law. To those who warn us that every embryo
is “one of us”, we should answer that this is nonsense. An embryo could of
course become one of us: but it could become one of us only after its
implantation, its development, its birth. Even an ovum and a spermatozoon, by
the way, can become embryos, but only if they preliminarily meet and fertilize
each other.

The embryo as such is not one of us and treating
it like one of us simply makes no sense.